Cloves and Cinnamon and Nameless Names
by EssaGueraFulo
Summary: "'Great,' Chihiro's Inner Rufio grumbles, 'an acid trip interrupting the best moment of my life,' because what else could a suicidal silver-furred dragon-thing with chicken legs be? 'Projectile vomiting is exactly what I want to have a waking dream about right before my First Real Kiss,' Rufio whines."


Cloves and Cinnamon and Nameless Names[1]

Disclaimer: no characters were invented by me, though their ratio of "invented by someone else" to "witnessed in my own life varies" considerably. The sandbox is shared by Miyazaki and Jorge Amado, with cameos by Anne Lamott, Eric Kripke, whoever created the Robin Williams version of Peter Pan, and several others. I would leave in a heartbeat to go play somewhere else if any of them asked me to. I've also been reading fic for years and may be unconsciously paraphrasing someone else's idea or words - some of my most often-read authors include Katherine Batey (RIP,) Busaikko, Fernwithy, Edenfalling, Fresne, Swiss Army Knife (deleted account) and RagePrufrock. If you notice anything that looks like plagiarism, particularly of stories by those writers, feel free to message both myself and the author and I'll do everything I can to rectify it :)

Also, this is still a work in progress and I'm here as a learner. If to your eyes my story lacks clarity, is iffily organized, has too many references or descriptions or whatever else, flame away! I can take it as long as you're actually thinking critically (as opposed to nastily, in which case you'll affect me about as much as a mosquito.)

Chapter 1.

February 2nd, 2010

_Chihiro_

"O cheiro do cravo

A cor da canela

Eu vim de longe

Vim ver Gabriela"

"Look, Chihiro. Rose petals."

Ameko, all slender limbs and wild hair and silvery-gray tunic with contact lenses to match, is every inch her namesake right now, and Chihiro wilts a little. She's dreamt of being a rain-child like Ameko - cockily and supernaturally wise; achingly beautiful despite an acne-ridden face bare of makeup; despite hair crunchy and strawlike with dye.

She's dreamed of being sure-footed like Ameko, who has somehow intuited a way to channel the pressures in her life so that instead of becoming sacred roadkill[3], sentience destined to be flattened even in death, she is lithe and delicate and strong as spider-silk. A real rose in a sea of fake flowers[4], as Jorge Amado would say, though Ameko is more of a diamond scampering eagerly through a crowd of sooty coal-lumps and vultos.

'Made of carbon just like the rest of us, you are' the Rufio[5] inside Chihiro thinks sourly, fondly. 'Except under pressure, you turn into a jewel instead of being ground to dust.'

Exactly three months ago, on a Fukuoka beach like this one, Ameko blew Chihiro's brains all the way past the moon[6] when she set down her guitar, waved away a joint, took Chihiro's hand in hers and led her away from the bohemian outpouring of joy that her street performer[7] buddies called a birthday party.

From the far side of the bonfire, Ameko's bandmates from Las Góibas and the Jardim Vergínia Boy Band paused their recitation of "Who loves orange soda?" to send the two of them off with whoops and a mishmashed remix of "um tapinha não dói" involving a term Ameko said she hadn't heard since she was a (relatively) monocultural ten-year-old. Off in their less morally ambivalent corner, the Domingueiros, The Islanders and The Vision narrowed their eyes and tried to look disapproving, but failed utterly and couldn't hold in their laughter, which made their attempted scolding gazes all the funnier. The older generation - the Turma, La Flia, The Mediocres, The Survivors, and Zen Militants For El Salvador - made wiseass cracks but ultimately waved Chihiro and Ameko off indulgently, turning back to hot spiced wine and catch-up conversations about life, love and the universe.

The fading sounds of catcalls and "Bachata en Fukuoka" waved them a gentle goodbye, and Ameko's sweaty fingertips brought heat raging into Chihiro's gut and cheeks, if not her freezing the first time that evening, Chihiro forgot that she felt like a cat lady among social geniuses, forgot that the bonfire made her eyes water and was stinking up her only decent coat, now newly dyed by the dregs of some drunkard's deep purples drink. Forgot that the food tasted too strange to enjoy and that the purple bracelet her parents gave her when they moved to Fukuoka had disappeared in the maelstrom of nissei and expat Latinos effortlessly throwing the best party ever.

It was winter that December day, far chillier than today's early springtime, and once they were away from bonfire and human movement and sweet, clove and cinnamon-filled mulled grape wine, the cold was a sharp, splintering thing that tingled in Chihiro's numb fingers and toes and prickled the inside of her rapidly-numbing nose.

So Ameko made it quick, leaning towards Chihiro's lips infinitely sooner than Chihiro could have sweet-talked her brain into arriving at the stunned realization that Ameko might like her in a not-so-platonic way.

For the tiniest moment, Chihiro was teleported to that nameless place most humans nickname Eternity. Suddenly there, she felt baptized in holy flames that stopped the freezing wind in its tracks, leaving nothing but the crashing, vicious joy of the Pacific and the grit of cold sand under her bare feet. Of rough rock under her heavily-clothed back, of Ameko's hand sliding under the fabric of her jacket to ghost over her torso.

Of Ameko's miraculous, chapped lips, clove and cinnamon-scented and purple with mulled grape wine, a millisecond away from Chihiro's.

I am beloved, Chihiro realized, and though Inner Rufio cackled derisively at the ridiculous lameness of the realization, Chihiro clung to it. She recognized it, if only from pipe dreams.

Though her mother[8] insisted on showering a generous allowance on her only child; though her father glared at every boy Chihiro brought home (all fucking three of them, because Chihiro wasn't the most trusting person, didn't put herself out there for many guys, was always disappointed when she did); though the boys themselves blushed and bought chocolates and didn't kiss her without asking first, none of them, and no one besides them, had ever known Chihiro deeply enough to love her.

No one until Ameko, who she'd met six weeks before that November birthday party; Ameko, who stood out from the crowd of sheeplike commuters like the red-dressed beauty that tries to tempt Neo back into the Matrix.

Ameko was real in a way no one else was, so she knew how to really love her brother and her music, her dead parents and, apparently, Chihiro. Boring, awkwardly plodding Chihiro, who realized now that she was, in contrast to the rest, very much alive.

But before Ameko's chapped lips could add another dimension of rough joy to Chihiro's hyperawareness, an image flashed through her mind.

_Great,_ Chihiro's Inner Rufio grumbled, _an acid trip interrupting the best moment of my life_, because what else could a suicidal silver-furred dragon-thing with chicken legs, blood pouring from his insides in violently sluggish pulses, be?

The image turned into a waking dream, and though Chihiro tried her best to claw back to Ameko, it held her fast, flooding the present tense so absolutely that the dream became all there ever was, all there could ever be.

_She sees..._

_A life-saving herb-cake split in two by a child's puny teeth._

_Puny child-hands forcing open a powerful draconian jaw – hands that 48 hours earlier could barely lift a lump of coal, though Chihiro isn't sure why she knows this._

_Skinny arms pushing the folk meds deep into the creature's mouth, holding his jaw shut as he bucks furiously in violent despair._

_Chihiro's eyes tear over in spite of herself, not for the loss of Ameko, but for the creature, whose weakening thrashing screams 'please just let me go, just let it end, I don't deserve to live.'_

_But the little girl holds tight, and after awhile the meds find their target, attract the poison inside him like a magnet, and shoot along with it from the dragon's throat._

Awesome, _Inner Rufio thinks pettily, _projectile vomiting is exactly what I want to have a waking dream about right before my First Real Kiss. _Chihiro tries again to push her way back to Ameko, but the dream holds her fast, captivates her. She can't turn away, doesn't want to, because a malevolent leaden poison-glob leaps away from the medicine, strong despite the absence of its host._

Aw, shit, _Inner Rufio thinks._

_But the superficially puny girl sees through the thing's opaque exterior to the punyness at the demon's core and crushes it under a bony bare foot. _

_Turns back to the dragon._

_The dragon, who has become an androgynous ivory-skinned child with severely cut hair and almond-shaped eyes green eyes closed in sickness. _How do you know they're green, then? _Inner Rufio questions belligerently. But Chihiro keeps watching_

_The little girl turns the child over, tucks it into a futon with the help of a Shiva__**[9]**_ _and of a narrow-faced older girl that affectionately calls her Genius of Klutz._

_The puny girl – the Shiva calls her by the name Sen, which fits as badly as her standard-issue servant's garb – says something ridiculously noble about rescuing dragons from old hags who are really just grannies, and the narrow-faced girl's long jaw drops further than any human's could. _

"_What the hell is this?" Chihiro and the older girl ask the Shiva, reeling with the glimpse of the unknown, and it answers in an old man's scratchity-velvet voice "Haven't you ever seen it before, silly? This is love__**[10]**_"

The dream released her then, and Chihiro was back to the pre-kiss past tense, but the dream was still there, and Chihiro knew what she'd seen, knew that it somehow changed not just the form but the very substance of things.

So instead of kissing the person who allowed her to hope that the concept of a soulmate wasn't the deluded invention of the out-of-touch likes of Jane Austen[11] Chihiro lifted a hand heavier than the heaviest lump of leaden coal and set a finger softly, but oh-so-horribly-firmly, on Ameko's miraculous porn-star[12] lips.

Forced heavy thoughts into light words, and word-vomited[13]: "Never took you for the type to slip something in my drink, lovie, but I'm glad it was LSD instead of Rohypnol[14]"

Ameko's eyes widened in furious shock. This close, Chihiro could see where her irises ended, a millimeter away from the edge of the silvery contact lenses that Prophetically Savvy Ameko would insist - were she ever cornered into admitting so - reveal her true eyes. Ameko firmly believes the lenses hide only the false irises that this world dumped in her lap like so much lumpy porridge. Chihiro knew this the minute she saw Ameko waltzing through the crowded subway station, perfumed by the mundanity of clove-and-cinnamon soap and yet filling the underground stuffy place with fresher, purer air than any Chihiro had ever breathed.

Chihiro's voice was stuck in her throat at the sight of Ameko's anger. The words didn't want to come out, didn't deserve to come out, but she needed to fix this, needed Ameko to know as well as Chihiro did – still does – that Ameko was – still is - worth all the love in the world, though Chihiro wasn't quite so sure anymore that Chihiro herself was the right delivery-boy for it.

So instead of the truth, she borrowed a line from the TV series she and Ameko bonded over that first day, when Chihiro ditched school to follow Ameko home and Ameko noticed. Noticed, but didn't chase her off for being a creepy, incompetent stalker. Invited Chihiro upstairs for clove-mulled grape wine, roasted pine-nuts called pinhões, and demon-hunting gaijin[15] brothers.

In an ideal world, Chihiro would make everything better by bringing out Ameko's belly-laugh.

"You're a handsome devil, but I just don't swing that way," she choked out. It wasn't enough, and it was a travesty, because she couldn't be farther from laughter - or from the truth.

It was a lie, but it also wasn't, because while Chihiro aired - still airs - on the lesbian side of bi, and while being with Ameko felt - still feels - like a million kinds of just right, Chihiro had just been crashed into by the drunken taxicab of Reality[16]. And it fundamentally changed things. She knew, now, that her faith came from something else.

She knew that hanging all of her hopes on another sentient individual mortal was unfair to them both.

Chihiro's eyes, which she'd closed to avoid the hurt look on Ameko's face, flew open when a tortured form of the belly-laugh made an entrance. Ameko forced a chuckle, cuffing Chihiro upside the head. Her voice was unsteady – tears, Chihiro wondered, of rage or of sadness? – but she meant to be forgiving when she shook her head and nipped her chuckles in the bud with a gasping "Fuck you and your supernatural ability to make me laugh"

The two of them sank to the sand in the lee of the boulder[17], protected from the wind and unable to see the sea, but knowing full well that it was in reach.

Sides pressed together, arms snaked around each other's necks like the gently binding red thread of destiny[18], they sat for awhile, giggling at the sheer absurdity of finding your Soul-Mate and releasing her back into the sea. 'Not the one that got away, not at all' Chihiro thought. 'No, she's the one who deserves water in her gills, the one who won't live no matter how much air I pump into her.'

Ameko leaned her head on Chihiro's shoulder, and Chihiro carded her fingers through Ameko's coarse sky-blue and silver curls. Waiting.

Eventually, without raising her head, Ameko mumbled, sounding for all the world like a two-year-old about to drift off to Sleepyland, "LSD, huh? Did you seriously have some trip while I was about to kiss you?"

Chihiro laughed, and told this Realest of people the unvarnished truth.

"It felt more like déjà vu than acid"

Ameko nodded, accepting that there would be a time for explanations[19], then said something petulant about going back to the bonfire to down her fucking body weight in shouchu, nevermind the quentão.

So Chihiro rose, pulled Ameko to her feet, prepared herself for the bravest thing she'd say that night – the bravest thing she'll ever say to this ethereal creature who pulled her singlehandedly from Suicide's clutches

"I'll hold your hair back when you're drunk and pukey[20]. If you'll still have me for a friend."

The words hung hopefully in the air for a moment, invisible raindrops glinting jewel-like in the moonlight, then splashed into nothingness, because this time there was no miraculous laugh. Ameko's eyes gleamed with hurt.

Chihiro would have set herself afire on the spot, had she gasoline and a match on hand.

"My brother would rather do that, I think. And it'll keep him from pounding your corpse for hours after you're dead, taking care of me will. But come over next week. Tell me about that déjà vu. Okay?"

Chihiro nodded breathlessly.

Somehow, it was.

OK - Zero Killed. Life went on, that November day.

Ameko is still in Chihiro's today, Febuary 2nd of the Western calendar, three months after what they affectionately baptized The Day The Shit Hit The Fan And Promptly Vanished, to her brother's chagrin.

Walking along the same Pacific coastline and pointing out rose petals in the sand.

Dedicated to Heavenly parent and Earthly family; to the likes of Eli Clare, Gloria Anzaldua, Luis and Kimber and Simone for taking the road less traveled long before Obama dared to set his eager toes on its unpaved "people-just-love-people" surface; to the sister and partner who are my original characters' meatsuits; but most of all to David, who channeled the love of all of the above for months on end, dragging me "kicking and screaming [in joy, pain, and anticip...ation] through fast dreams."

See, David found the writer hiding inside the lurker and coaxed her out soothingly with what translated to "Get up off your [self-damned] butt and write already! And enough with exalting the phrase "piece of shit at the center of the universe" - it gets stale fast."

He then proceeded to fire back at my garbled comment about snowballs and Hell and chance and frost with "I think you have a starburst's chance in the night sky."

50/50 odds. I can live with that :)

Anywhoozle, love you all. In a non-platonic (because David taught me, among many other things, to dislike dry boringness), deeply passionate way.

(But Jesse's the only one I want to seek naked. No offense to everyone else!)

References:

[1] Title lovingly borrowed from Jorge Amado's masterpiece Gabriela, Cravo e Canela and from Miyazaki's genius Spirited Away, which I believe to be a perfect blend of Alice in Wonderland and Gospel Truth.

[2] Ame means rain; ko means child.

[3] "sacred roadkill" is a line from Regina Spektor's song about stretchmarks. I have no clue right now what it's called, but Google is your friend.

[4] Absolutely no idea what page number this is on, but it happens in the middle of the book, when Gabriela is at a gala, dressed in silks and surrounded by female glares, and two of the men say she'd just as well be dressed in chita, because she's a real rose in a sea of fake flowers.

[5] Best character in the history of cinema, with the possible exception of Brandon Lee's The Crow

[6] My revenge on Francis Schaffer for the way he's influenced my life: using his metaphor in a lesbian love story

[7] My therapist David has a niece who lives on the streets, sometimes, in Tokyo, earning a living as a street musician. Ameko is partially based on her.

[8] Spirited Away is the only Miyazaki movie I've seen that hints at child neglect and potential abuse – usually, parents in his movies are warm and kind and empathetic. Chihiro's parents, however, are well-meaning but too self-absorbed to notice how little they love their daughter.

[9] Shiva, Hindu god of destruction and rebirth and central motif in the amazing documentary Favela Rising.

[10] Yes, I shamefacedly altered that line so that Bob Marley would be in this fic, because who would I be without him?

[11] I don't mean to disrespect dear Janey. But I really don't like her stories.

[12] Anne Lammott term borrowed from Operating Instructions.

[13] Yep, I quoted Mean Girls :P

[14] date-rape drug

[15] Japanese term equivalent to gringo

[16] Reference to Mary Pipher's metaphor in Reviving Ophelia – I have no idea which page it's on.

[17] Reference to The Rats of NIMH

[18] Reference to common belief - based out of Confucianism? - in the Asias that every person has Destiny tied to their pinky in the form of an invisible red thread; everyone's threads are tangled in everyone else's and create a web of humanity.

[19] "for everything there is a season"

[20] Reference to some idiotic song that was my guilty pleasure at thirteen – I refuse to Google it, but you're welcome to. The lyric went: "you are the only one who holds my hair back when I'm drunk and get sick. And you are the only one who knows exactly what I mean."


End file.
